Twitter Lead Generation Cards Explained

Twitter’s Lead Generation Cards allow your Twitter followers to opt-in to your email list directly from a tweet with a single click.

For example, you could use a Lead Generation Card in a tweet promoting a lead magnet. All your followers would have to do is click to expand the tweet (much like when you expand a tweet to see an image) and then simply click a subscribe button featuring the text of your choice.

Here’s an example of one after I clicked to expand the tweet:

As you can see, the Lead Generation Card automatically pulled the name and email address associated with my Twitter account. This is another big win for marketers because folks tend to use their best email addresses for their social media accounts.

How to Make the Most of Your Twitter Lead Generation Card Opt-Ins

I don’t want you to use Twitter’s Lead-Generation Cards to get a ton of new leads.

I want you to use them to get a ton of high-quality new leads.

As Ramit Sethi (founder of IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com) recently wrote, “A small list with the right people will always outperform a bigger list with other people.”

Ramit is saying that a small list of people who are highly qualified, highly engaged leads will always outperform an average list of lukewarm leads.

What makes a lead highly qualified? To put it simply, the more someone interacts with your brand — whether through opening emails, clicking through the blog posts, downloading lead magnets, purchasing products, etc. — the more qualified that person becomes.

Just check out the chart that accompanied Ramit’s claim. It shows the sales and conversion rate of leads who had already purchased one of his products versus the sales and conversion rate of leads who had not.

Holy conversions, Batman! That’s a lot of leads!

Notice: Ramit’s prospect list is more than 17 times larger than his customer list. But the leads on his customer list still gave him 30 more sales and a whopping conversion rate of 6.23%!

The lesson? It’s not about the quantity of your subscribers. It’s about the quality.

So the question becomes: How do you take casual Twitter followers who opt-in for your list on a whim… and turn them into highly qualified, highly engaged, ultra warm leads?

That’s a concern many marketers are facing. Luckily, there’s a solution you can implement in only a matter of minutes.

How to Eliminate the Biggest Worry About Twitter Lead Generation Cards

Kyle Lacy of ExactTarget said, “It’ll be interesting to see, once people start using [Twitter Lead Generation Cards], what they value that one-click subscription as. We don’t want to get to the point where we’re liking an email subscription as a Facebook like.”

Translation: If it’s as easy to opt-in to an email list as it is to “like” a Facebook status, will those email leads be as valuable as leads generated through landing pages and two-step opt-in processes?

Kyle’s point is that the amount of engagement someone has with your lead magnet is often directly proportional to the amount of engagement they had with your brand prior to receiving it.

For example, which of the following two ebooks are you more likely to read?

The one you received via email after reading about it on a landing page and entering your email address into an opt-in form, or…

The one you received via email after reading less than 140 characters about it and clicking a button.

I’m putting my money on the first example. Here’s why…

When someone reads about your offer or watches a video about it on a landing page, you have a much greater opportunity to build up the benefit they will receive from what you’re giving them. You can increase their desire for your lead magnet, thus increasing the probability they will actually read (or watch, or listen to) it.

So how can you utilize the ease of the one-click Twitter Lead Generation Card strategy while also finding a way to make your prospect engage more?

By using an easy strategy that’s quickly become one of our absolute favorites here at LeadPages…

The Often-Ignored Post-Opt-In Opportunity That Warms Up Lukewarm Leads

Most marketers are totally ignoring one of the biggest opportunities to get new leads to interact with their brand.

Think about what actually happens when someone chooses to opt-in to your list, whether through a Twitter Lead Generation Card or a landing page…

Out of an ocean of other tweets or web pages, they just happened to find yours. To top it off, they then actually chose to click on it.

And finally, in an age where people are getting more and more overwhelmed with flooded inboxes, they actually trusted you enough to say, “Yes! I want you to send me more email.”

At this point, your lead is in a state of hyper-compliance.

Yet what do most marketers do here? They simply say, “Thanks, check your email,” and send the leads on their merry way.

They totally ignore the opportunity to further qualify / warm up these hyper-compliant new leads.

Remember: Interaction = Warmth. The more you can get a lead to interact, the warmer that lead becomes.

Your Thank You Pages give you a perfect opportunity to encourage further interaction… yet so few take advantage of this opportunity.

But what if you don’t have a webinar to send new subscribers to? No problem. Simply adding a video to your Thank You Page can increase engagement. In fact, we use this very method when people register for our webinars. Check out the page:

This Thank You Page contains a powerful video that inspires new leads to quickly take action.

Simply adding a video can be a big engagement booster on your thank you pages.

If you’d like to easily add one today, our video guy, Jeff, created a generic version of the video we use on the page pictured above that you can download for your own personal use here.This free download comes with the video, the ScreenFlow file, and the script, so you can feel free to personalize it or use it as is.

In our video, we congratulate the registrants on making the decision to sign up. Then, we give them a list of four quick actions:

Print the page as a reminder to attend.

Click the “like” or “Tweet” button in the left sidebar to spread the word about the webinar.

Add the event to your iCal or Google calendar (we provide buttons at the bottom).

Download our webinar workbook so you can take great notes when you attend.

Every single one of those actions represents an opportunity for us to further qualify leads. Even if they only act on half of them, that’s still another two degrees of qualification we earned, all without lifting a finger.

There are plenty of ways you could apply this strategy to your business. If you’re giving away a free ebook or report, your thank you page could include a video asking your leads to:

Click the “like” or “Tweet” button to share the download with their friends.

Schedule a 15-minute block of time right now to read the free download.

Tweet about their favorite part of your free ebook or report (a great way to get testimonials).

Go to their inbox and download your guide right away.

Including these action items is an ideal way for instantly engaging your leads. After all, who is more likely to actually read your free download…

Someone who opts in and lands on a page that says nothing more than, “Thanks, check your email?” Or…

Someone who opts in and lands on a page with a video that gets them to take four more immediate actions?

It’s relatively easy to get someone to click a “Subscribe” button on a tweet that offers them something for free. It’s not so easy to get that person to actually use the content you send them.

If you don’t have a Thank You Page that encourages engagement yet, LeadPages makes it easy. We currently have four templates built from the ground-up with this strategy in mind. You can see another example from one of our users below.

The LeadPages users at Ready, Set, Die! (a zombie-themed 5k race), used our Thank You Page template to drive both Facebook likes and traffic to their website.

Are you implementing this Thank You Page strategy, or have you given Twitter Lead Generation Cards a try? What kind of results are you seeing? Leave a comment and let me know!

Thanks, Kosio! Great question. Lead Gen Cards are now available for everyone! All you have to do is set up a Twitter Ads account (which you can do for free). From there, you can access the card creation tool from the “Creatives” tab in your ad account dashboard.

Hey Tom, you can show Twitter lead gen cards to your followers free of charge, but you also have the option to do a paid Promoted Tweet campaign to get your cards in front of users who don’t follow you.

I just set up my first twitter card today. I wasn’t sure how I got access to the email from twitter and didn’t quite understand how to deliver the “free item” to them. Ultimately, I take them to the thankyou page with leadpages and have an image of the Report Cover above the “Thanks for signing up” (which they have to click on to go to another page to download the report) then I go on to have a video that asks them to like our facebook page as well as to click on the Step2 or image to get a free video series. With the apology that they have to re-enter their name and email in order to get the videos. Any tips on how to avoid all these extra steps would be appreciated.

Hi John, so after taking a look at your thank you page and opt-in process, it looks like you’re giving subscribers a free report PLUS a surprise bonus free video series that is dripped out over time via email. So I think I understand your dilemma — you’d like for them to get the free video series automatically without having to reenter their email address.

Doing this will likely involve connecting your lead data in Twitter with the CRM you’re using (Mailchimp, Infusionsoft, etc.). By default, when you set up a Lead Generation Card, Twitter stores all of the subscriber data in your Twitter account, which you then have to download as a .CSV and import directly into your CRM.

However, if you connect your lead data with your CRM, this data can be transferred automatically when someone subscribes. My advice would be to do this extra step (connect the data to your CRM) and send your subscribers directly into your autoresponder campaign that delivers your video series. Here’s a walkthrough from Twitter on connecting your lead card data to your CRM. Hope this helps!